[1]
I mean predictions on incoming sensory input relevant to immediate action in the environment.
[2]
I think that these levels are real. There is a level of entire populations, social groups, individual organisms and there is a level of individual brains. Cognition takes place within and across (at least the final three) levels.
[3]
See my target article for examples.
[4]
Predictions on sensory input in the here-and-now.
[5]
CI/ENC provides just these motivations and details. Clark himself proposes that the PP framework “offers a standing invitation to evolutionary, situated, embodied, and distributed approaches to help ‘fill in the explanatory gaps’ while delivering a schematic but fundamental account of the complex and complementary roles of perception, action, attention, and environmental structuring” (Clark 2013, p. 195).
[6]
See also their contributions to this volume.
[7]
There are also theories of attention based upon PP, but I won’t address those here.
[8]
Thomas Metzinger has raised an interesting question for me here: whether there is continuity between the levels? My argument has been that there is continuity between the levels, but this continuity is made possible by NPP’s, LDP and neural redeployment. PP explains how we make perceptual inferences about the environment and it might explain something about the hierarchical organisation of neural architecture. However, it should be seen as playing a role in the organisation and enculturation of the brain, not the only role.
[9]
I take it that Hohwy is claiming that cultural representations function so as to make perceptual inferences more precise. This would be another way of reducing socio-cultural phenomena to a role that is complementary to the brain, with the processing needs of the brain dictating the evolutionary path that culture must take. The externalist perspective takes it that there are social and cultural pressures that require cognitive innovations (sometimes even new phenotypes).